Star Trek Discovery 1x13 - a return to Starfleet

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Here be SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery series 1 episode 13!

A.K.A. the speech-fight to the death episode.

The first fight we get is poor Michael Burnham trying to reason with the Emperor and being summarily cut off - so she makes a break for it, taking weapons with her.

Then we do a little Star Trek by turning one of real life’s problems into a sci-fi conundrum, for people to ponder on a “hypothetical” level: the spore engine on the ISS Charon is blocking the mycelial network, I guess like a dam, and using its power for the ship. However, this is harming the network and spreading infection that the network cannot heal itself from without enough of a break; as Acting Captain Saru points out, it’s not sustainable. (On a side note, I thought that if you have the highest rank on the ship and therefore have to take control, you are automatically addressed as ‘captain’ anyway. Whatever - he has assumed command and he’s good at it. If only pilot-episode-Saru could see him now.) At some point the network will be overcome and collapse and die. This will cause all of its routes and connections to also die - and the destinations that are attached to it. Basically it’s the end of all life in all universes - the entire multiverse, as Stamets puts it, for all time. Ouch.

Stamets: [Damming the mycelial network provides them with] enough power to run their city-sized ship, and power weapons that can destroy a planet.
Airiam: As they did on Harlac.
Saru: How can a people be so short-sighted?
Stamets: The Terrans are egotistical enough to believe that they can replenish this resource before it collapses.

Yikes. Not sure if he’s alluding to global warming caused by people strip-mining Earth for fossil fuels or just talking crazy.

And then in barges Mirror!Lorca, all gung ho for preserving humans as their own people, their own race. Ironically, isn’t he proposing what the klingons did at the beginning of this season? He asks everyone to renounce Emperor Georgiou and follow him instead, to - and I quote - build “a future where we together will make the Empire glorious again.” He’s despotic, utterly racist and completely in need of a massive attitude re-adjustment. This is my Mirror!Lorca, and he doesn’t disappoint. Although at this point I’m also rooting for Georgiou. I haven’t been this conflicted since Dukat vs Weyoun.

When Emperor ‘Pippa’ gets to face-off with Lorca, we get a cheeky red-Borg-targeting-in-the-dark moment from weapons - love it. And here’s the second fight of the show - guns blazing, people being vaporised left, right and centre. Some famous mirror-faces die here, but not the one I really wanted (Landry - sorry, but no, I don't trust you). Georgiou escapes using an emergency temporal shift - sorry, an emergency transport. Crafty! While they’re doing this, Burnham is hot-wiring the Charon’s comms to contact Saru and spill everything. Stamets works it out, Tilly does the math, and Saru calls Burnham ‘my friend’ and refuses to leave without her. Stamets updates her about the Charon’s super-mycelial reactor (love that name) and they form a plan to take it out - so that the network can heal itself. Cut to a plot point - the opening to the living core of the mycelial network is right in front of the throne. Hmm, have to remember that one.

By the way - love the use of the TOS chirps for the communicators and also the tricorder sounds. Awesome.

Lorca cements his villainy by giving Burnham a speech on how the Federation is a social experiment doomed to failure, that “every species, every choice, every opinion is not equal, no matter how much they want it to be.” He really does do his best to sway her to his side - his entire speech is geared toward telling her how amazing she is and how she’s the only one who can help him bring order to this universe. Hmm - makes you wonder what he did to get rid of the Mirror!Burnham, doesn’t it?

Burnham is having none of it, and after showing off her hacking skills she then shows off her intuition skills by tracking down Emperor Pippa - whose bracelet is supposed to keep her life signs undetectable. I’m sure that will come up later in the series. Burnham gives her the speech this time, basically pledging her loyalty to the idea of neither of them dying and Lorca getting his teeth kicked in. Her line of “Lorca believes destiny brought me to him - he doesn’t need to tell me what my future is. I’m responsible for forging my own path - we all are” is a good one, I have to say. Burnham manages to convince the Emperor by giving her the old Picard chestnut of “the line must be drawn here”, and the Emperor is impressed enough to go with it. I mean hey, why not? I’m sure she was wondering just how she was going to get out of this one before Burnham came in anyway. How can you be sure anyone is still loyal to you on that ship?

Stamets and the engineering crew have bad news; in order to destroy the ISS Charon’s super-mycelial reactor the Discovery and everyone on it will be sacrificed. What do the crew do? First they look worried. Then it’s revealed they’re worried because they can’t be sure their sacrifice will actually destroy the reactor. But hey, this isn’t Star Trek without a Kobayashi Maru, right? Saru gives a bloody good speech and does not accept this no-win scenario. Somewhere in Iowa young Jim Kirk’s ears are burning, I’m sure. But this is fight number three: the fight to survive through science and generally being an awesome crew that works together.

Burnham’s plan to get closer to Lorca works - she does the ‘taking in her colleague as a prisoner’ trope and Lorca’s eyes light up like he’s been injected with ketracel white. He’s trying to be cautious, taking her visible weapon from her, but he’s still just itching to accept Burnham into his dirty dozen of rebels and wannabe Empire centurions. He’s bursting with excitement - look at his face. He certainly is a villain I enjoy not liking. Dukat indeed.

Tilly comes up with a way to circumvent their Kobayashi Maru, and Stamets hits his stride and blinds everyone with science - and even thanks her for her enthusiasm and awesomeness (a stark difference to his attitude toward her at the beginning of the season). Isn’t it time she was granted a field commission now? At least to Ensign? He gives her the honour of explaining their crazy plan to the captain. Ngaw.

When the Discovery does catch up with the Charon a second plan goes into action; while Lorca is gloating about how he built them into a great team of formidable soldiers under his expert leadership, Saru is basically your toneless, unflappable captain doing his: “yeah mate, not interested in you to be honest” in return. When Lorca tells him Burnham’s staying behind in exchange for their lives, his calm retort of “I need to hear that from her - you are not a reliable source” made me clap and appreciate Saru even more than I do already. Burnham lays the trap and gives him the signal and the throne room of the Charon goes into balls-to-the-wall-Michelle-Yeoh-fight mode. Burnham holds her own with presumably Vulcan martial arts (Suus Mahna?) and Lorca is no slouch, but FUCK ME EMPEROR PIPPA GOES FULL-ON WING CHUN AND IT IS GLORIOUS (the character, not necessarily the fighting style). The axe-kick to his face as he’s trying to bear-hug a dagger into her face is amazing - while you’re still getting over that Lorca’s literally stabbing Landry in the back, but is it to protect Burnham or is to fight Burnham himself? Emperor Pippa properly kicking flying daggers from her own face made me almost shout in victory - Michelle Yeoh is beyond impressive. At one point Emperor Pippa and Lorca punch each other and nearly fall - evidence of them being equal in combat, or just for fun?

Burnham getting the drop on him and holding him at phaser point was a good end, when she spelt out for him that everything he had done to finagle his way back to the mirror universe was unnecessary because she would have helped him if he’d just asked - that was awesome.

Yes, Burnham’s end was good, but Emperor Pippa’s ending of him was better. Into the opening in front of the throne he goes - into the super-mycelial reactor to be ripped apart, atom by atom, or just spread throughout the mycelial network in tiny, tiny pieces? Who knows. Emperor Pippa decides she will go down with her ship to help Burnham escape - a defeated Emperor must die on her feet, after all. But Burnham is Starfleet through and through, and what should have been Emperor Pippa’s greatest sacrifice (making her a redeemable character?) is stolen from her as Burnham grabs her before transport, and takes her back to the Discovery.

They destroy the ISS Charon with some very TOS-sounding torpedoes (and the mirror universe rejoices, I should think - how this will affect the species ready to fight for equality is anyone’s guess). Stamets makes the jump and they ride the mycelial wave to get home to their own Alpha Quadrant. If you weren’t shouting “find the clearing in the forest!” as he struggled then you and I were in very different places. Thank you, Culber (I had an eyelash in my eye, ok? An eyelash, people). And what of the green speck of presumably Lorca-spore-ash that landed on Tilly’s shoulder? Was it a “watch the leaf fall to the ground as a sign it’s ended” moment? Part of me hopes so - the other part hopes that our universe Lorca might be found.

And so we’re back. From outer space. But in an Army of Darkness “I slept too looooong!” kinda way, they’re back 9 months later than they left. Not good. The Terran Empire may have been dismantled in the other universe (or will Landry survive to take the throne?), and Emperor Pippa may have been royally pissed off by her ‘rescue’, but Saru has bigger problems; a mixture of TOS and TNG error noises tell them that while they were out, the klingons won the war and Starfleet is unable to answer comms - perhaps because they no longer exist.

Where that leaves us is anyone’s guess - can you use spores to jump back 9 months and help the war effort? Would you even use the spore drive again, knowing what it does to humans if they use it too much? Do they locate what’s left of Starfleet and begin retaliatory efforts?

I for one cannot wait to find out.

Peach and lube, people, peach and frelling lube!